Interesting tidbit in yesterdays Trainnews too - SD getting a few more dribbles of funding for double-track jobs. They've been pretty successful at piecemealing a double-track line by upgrading and connecting sidings, with a few (needed) bridge jobs here and there. Must be getting down to the end of the inexpensive (hey, we can do a few things for $50mil!) stuff list by now.

And for the one who wonders about SD being the only big city served only by publicly-owned RRs, try New York? I'm pretty sure that one public agency or another actually owns the r/w for all the rail lines into the City of NY, though for freight purposes they're parceled out to various companies mostly (but not entirely) successors to the original owners. In SD, again iirc, public ownership ends at the yard where Coaster parks stuff and light rail fixes stuff. Most of the yard, and the freight tracks into the port area from it, are still BNSF. So that plus BNSF freight rights on the rest of the line mean that, like in most cases, freight is still privately hauled.

Technically, AMTK is not a government agency (though do any railroads still hold stock in it?), though at times it's hard to tell plus it only survives with federal and other govt funding plus Congress tends to give it direct orders from time to time.